John Mitchell’s affidavit on the clemency restriction

John Mitchell’s affidavit on the clemency restriction was a sworn statement meant to support James R. Hoffa’s challenge to the prohibition on his participation in the labor movement after Richard Nixon commuted his sentence. Its importance lay both in what it asserted—that the restriction had not been initiated or suggested by Mitchell or, to his knowledge, other Justice Department officials—and in the contested route by which Hoffa obtained it. In Frank Sheeran’s account, the paper passed from Mitchell to Sheeran, then to Rosario Bufalino, before it helped Hoffa intensify his campaign to return to union life. The affidavit appeared to offer a direct answer to the question of who had imposed the restriction, but its author’s later conviction for lying under oath cast a shadow over that answer.

The Statement and Its Claims

The affidavit identified John Mitchell as the United States Attorney General during the relevant period and addressed the origin of the labor restriction in Hoffa’s presidential commutation. Mitchell swore that neither he nor, to his knowledge, another official of the United States Department of Justice had initiated or suggested including the restriction. The second numbered paragraph extended the denial to Richard Nixon: Mitchell stated that Nixon had not initiated or suggested to him, nor, to his knowledge, to another Justice Department official during Mitchell’s tenure, that Hoffa’s commutation should restrict his activities in the labor movement.

Those clauses were carefully framed as denials of initiation or suggestion, with the second paragraph explicitly bounded by Mitchell’s knowledge. The affidavit did not itself remove the restriction or establish who had written it into the commutation. Its immediate value was evidentiary and political: it supplied Hoffa with a sworn account that challenged the basis for blaming the restriction on either the president or the attorney general. The document was signed by Mitchell and notarized by Rose L. Schiff in New York on October 15, 1973.

The Suitcase and the Delivery

Sheeran’s account places the affidavit within Hoffa’s continuing effort to regain a role in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. At Lake Orion, Hoffa told Sheeran that he was preparing a lawsuit to remove the restriction and would file after gathering more ammunition. Sheeran offered to join as a plaintiff, describing the prospective suit as one by active Teamsters who wanted Hoffa back in the union. Hoffa also discussed arranging a money drop for Mitchell and asked Sheeran to remind him about Sheeran’s testimonial dinner, which Hoffa promised to attend.

Later that October, Hoffa called Sheeran and sent him to meet Rosario Bufalino at the Branding Iron Restaurant. Bufalino gave Sheeran a suitcase containing $270,000. Sheeran drove to the Market Inn, where a stranger met him and took him by car to a large house. John Mitchell answered the door. Sheeran handed him the bag and received an envelope containing the affidavit; the encounter, as recounted, involved no conversation beyond the exchange. Sheeran then drove back to Philadelphia, met Rosario Bufalino at a restaurant, and showed him the document. The account says Bufalino read it and took care of it afterward, without specifying what that meant.

This chain of custody is part of the affidavit’s significance, not incidental packaging. The sworn statement was presented as legal ammunition, yet Sheeran’s narrative links its acquisition to a substantial cash delivery and to a sequence of intermediaries rather than to an ordinary exchange between counsel and client. The account establishes the circumstances Sheeran described; it does not independently resolve the purpose of the payment or what Bufalino subsequently did with the paper.

Use in Hoffa’s Campaign

With the affidavit in hand, Hoffa accelerated his public campaign against Frank Fitzsimmons and the restrictions on his own union activity. The book describes the document as reaching Hoffa while it was still moving through the court system on behalf of its purchaser. It also notes that, at that point, Mitchell’s later perjury conviction had not yet tainted the affidavit’s author in the public account. The sworn denial therefore entered the dispute when it could still be presented as an unchallenged statement from a former attorney general.

By February 1974, Hoffa was attacking Fitzsimmons publicly, including his travel and fitness to lead a union of more than two million members. The affidavit did not, by itself, settle the legal dispute or guarantee Hoffa’s return. Rather, it furnished a document-based counterclaim at a moment when Hoffa was building a lawsuit and seeking support from active Teamsters. Its force depended on the credibility of Mitchell’s sworn account and on the distinction between the restriction’s existence and the question of who had proposed it.

Later Discrediting and Documentary Limits

A little more than a year after the affidavit was sworn, Mitchell was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying under oath in the Watergate cover-up. The account emphasizes that the affidavit was still working its way through the court system when that conviction occurred. The later conviction did not, in the evidence presented here, constitute a separate finding that every statement in this particular affidavit was false. It did, however, undermine the standing of its author and make the document’s carefully qualified assurances more difficult to treat as definitive.

The book’s presentation thus holds two facts in tension: Mitchell made a formal, notarized denial about how the clemency restriction originated, and he was subsequently convicted of lying under oath in another matter. The affidavit records a claim made under oath; the circumstances of its delivery and the later conviction shape how that claim can be assessed. The evidence does not establish a final judicial resolution of the affidavit’s accuracy. Its significance rests in the role it played in Hoffa’s campaign, the unusual transaction through which Sheeran says it was obtained, and the subsequent collapse of the author’s credibility.